Page 28

‘I hope to ask his help,’ she said. ‘But … he will be a different god now. A Restish god, and most of his priests are from that land. If I cannot convince Restish to turn against their allies in Talicia, and Irisia to declare for us, then I do not think he will be minded to support us.’ She gazed towards Skedi.

‘Particularly as last time I called for his aid to Middren, it got him killed.’

Skedi shivered. His memory of his history was as broken as Yusef’s shrines.

He remembered fragments of wild gods, storms, and churning water.

‘You asked him to fight in Blenraden?’ he said.

He wondered if he should feel angry, that it was this that had got him killed, but he didn’t; it was a different life.

‘Not to fight,’ said Lessa. ‘To help people escape. He owed me, and he came.’

Inara chewed her lip. ‘Did you love him?’ she asked. In her childhood, she had not been deeply curious about the other parent who had made her, only since she had begun to discover her power, her godhead.

Lessa looked towards Skedi.

‘I do not remember him, my lady,’ he said, wondering what that look was for, what she wanted him to say, or what lie she wanted him to tell.

‘I adored him,’ said Lessa softly. ‘He took an interest in me. I helped negotiate the treaty between Commander Samin’s ships and Restish.

To him, I had left safe haven for a harsher life, and as with all gods, he found a contradiction to his nature …

curious. I was,’ she crossed her hands on her lap, purposefully keeping her posture calm, open, ‘I was a curiosity.’

Skedi shrank a little in the porthole. This was perhaps not a happy story.

What had he imagined? Some secret romance?

The idea had seemed so strange, even when he understood what Inara was.

Humans and gods were different. Humans were made from blood and dust, gods from love and faith … were they meant to meet?

‘He would come to the ship’s shrine at night,’ said Lessa.

‘We would speak over games of tactics, talk of the history he had seen. He taught me how to hide my emotions from gods, how to navigate by starlight, how to give hope through lies and tales.’ Skedi ruffled his feathers.

‘I was enthralled, and perhaps so was he.’

‘You don’t sound too happy about it, Mama,’ said Inara.

‘I wasn’t many years older than you, Ina,’ said Lessa.

‘Just nineteen. It’s easy to charm a child who knows little of the world’s ways.

The more I saw you grow, the more I questioned whether a centuries-old god had a right to lie with a woman so young, whether he intended to get me with child.

If I was just … another game. Despite how much I wanted it, desired it even …

over time I wondered …’ She cleared her throat, and smoothed her trews over her legs, her hand resting over where the scar cut through her thigh.

The boat sang its song of the sea; dipping and dancing, it reached a trio of waves. Light slipped through the porthole, then away again into shadow.

‘I saw him die,’ Lessa continued. ‘Even a great god can be overwhelmed by smaller divinities. And it took away the conversation I wanted to have. The questions I needed to ask.’ Lessa frowned at the bowl of briny soup on the floor.

‘I’m sorry, Inara,’ she said. ‘I spent years trying to think of a better story than a childish infatuation, and growing regret.’ Then she winced. ‘Not you, Inara. I don’t regret you. I chose you. You were so good and so smart, so kind. I—’

‘It’s all right to regret,’ said Inara, and her mother quietened.

‘I know that feeling. I regret never telling you about Skedi. I thought I was protecting you both, but I know now you would have helped me. I regret some things I did. People I hurt.’ Her mouth tugged down at the corners.

She didn’t feel like the girl Lessa spoke of.

The good girl. The smart girl. The innocent. Skedi knew this.

‘I regret not revealing myself,’ he added lightly. ‘I could have taught you both some nicer lies than the ones you had to keep.’

He was trying to lighten the weight on Inara’s colours, make her laugh, and she did, just a little. Lessa, too, managed a smile.

‘Mama,’ said Inara. ‘Do you … still love me?’ Her voice became small as she spoke, and she quailed into herself, her knees tightening up to her chin. ‘Even though … even though I’m not good any more?’

Lessa stared at her in surprise, and Skedi shrank himself down to the size of a mouse, staying very still. He shouldn’t be there. This was not for him.

The lady moved towards Inara, putting a hand on her knee, squeezing, reassuring. ‘Ina, you are, and always will be, my greatest love.’

Inara looked at her mother, and Skedi knew what she was thinking: the colours. The truth of Lessa that she kept tucked away, hidden from gods. Hidden from her.

Don’t lie to her, said Skedi, gently, to Inara. Tell her what you need. Give it a name.

Inara swallowed. ‘I need to see it,’ she said.

‘See what?’

‘The feelings … that you hide from gods. Mama, I need to see that you love me.’

Lessa did not understand at first, but slowly her face changed. ‘You have a god’s sight,’ she said, and Inara nodded, her chin and brow creased.

If Kissen had shown her colours when she needed to, in the king’s palace, so could Lessa.

Lessa took Inara’s hand, as she had done in the waters of Iska, and held it. Then she closed her eyes, breathing in, and finally breathed out.

Slowly, like the breaking of the day, beams of colour burst from her. A ripple of aquatic blue, perfect, salted, bright. A proud and certain edge of green hope and steely anger, the Craier colours. Her home on the sea, and her choice of home on land.

Then, russet browns, with reddish-gold tints like light through a spring river, like the turning dark of leaves, like polished wood, or the brown of jasper stones and amber set in gold.

Like the colour of Inara’s hair, and her eyes in sunlight.

The brightness of Lessa’s feeling filled the little cabin, shining over the walls, bathing her daughter in it. And Inara’s eyes filled with tears, seeing for the first time what her mother felt for her. All the colours of her love were her daughter, her home, and the sea.

A cough came from the bed, and a turn, then a hiss of swearing. Kissen cracked open her eyes.

‘Why,’ she muttered, her voice hoarse, ‘does everything fucking hurt again?’

Her gaze landed on Skedi, tiny and unobtrusive in his porthole seat, then she glanced over at Lessa and Inara.

‘Oh shit,’ she said, seeing their clasped hands. ‘Did I ruin a moment?’

Lessa’s colours flashed a strange bluish grey, and then disappeared again before Skedi could read the emotion. Irritation? Attraction? Sometimes it was hard to tell with humans.

The colour was, however, not far from the shade of Kissen’s eyes.

‘You’re awake,’ said Inara, jumping to her feet and letting go of Lessa’s hand.

‘You’re all alive,’ said Kissen, her head sliding back on the pillow. Through split lips, she smiled. ‘Next time you try to fight fire with fire, Lady Craier, plan it better.’